


Back to the Start

by SiriuslyPeeved



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Drabble Collection, F/M, Feels, Future Fic, Grieving Sherlock, M/M, Parentlock, Post-His Last Vow, Retirement, Sherlock Series 3 Spoilers, grandparentlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-01-08 21:23:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1137546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SiriuslyPeeved/pseuds/SiriuslyPeeved
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>2053: After the East wind passes, what is left behind? Ficlets in reverse chronological order following the Watson - Holmes family.</p><p>Was meant to be a fix-fic but ended up a broken-fic, as in my heart.  Season 3 spoilers.  Who knows yet about Season 4!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Back to the Start

Low-heeled footsteps tracked across the tiled entry and through the hardwood-floored kitchen, echoing against oak cabinet doors and calling out the dark and empty spaces behind: slipping up the wool-carpeted stair, rattling the picture frames against the wall.

Pressed to the eyepiece of his microscope, Sherlock pecked at a keyboard with one hand.

"It's been two weeks. Why didn't you answer the phone?"

"I'm fine."

"Well, I'm not."

He drew his head back. A small woman stood before him in the second-floor laboratory. Large eyes, (dark blue like the sea on a fair winter morning, like her father's favorite jumper) soft features, entirely unassuming and perfectly camouflaged to blend into dull suburban London. She stepped forward and buried her hot face in his shoulder.

He cupped the base of her skull. The weight of worry sank from her vertebrae into the palm of his hand.

"Catherine," he said into her hair.

"I thought -- God, I thought -- don't you ever do that to me again!"

"Yes, Dr. Watson."

She laughed into his dressing-gowned shoulder. (Tearstained silk, salt precipitating into fractal patterns.) "Please just return my calls next time, will you? Packet of ears in the post? Anything, Sherlock."

"I was busy."

She stood behind him, chin lightly on his left shoulder, wrapping her arms around him like she had in Baker Street when she climbed the back of his lab stool to investigate. "What are you working on?"

"A restaurant poisoning. Thought it was a stupid case of bacterial contamination, but I've found a trace of venom. Isolating it now."

"That's fun. Anything on for tea?"

"Not especially."

Catherine released him and sat on her father's lab stool. A book of crossword puzzles lay on the bench close at hand, open to the last clue John had noted down.

"The very last one. It was wrong."

Catherine held out both hands. Was she begging him to stop talking or merely asking to be touched?

Her fingers wound together with his. "Come and stay with us, Sherlock. I'd feel so much better knowing you were close by."

"You don't really want me to say yes."

Catherine's eyes flicked away for just half a second, enough of a tell. "I can't see you anywhere else but here, but I so hate the idea of you being alone."

Thirty-seven years ago, Sherlock had gotten on a plane. Catherine bulged forward from her mother's belly into a time in which she did not yet exist: baby girl Watson, an unknown quantity. And then --

"I never thought I would get to know you."

Catherine's arms curled tight around Sherlock like a python on a baby baboon. He had never been any good at comfort.

_Just stop bloody running your mouth and hold her, idiot. That's all she needs._

Those were John's words the first time Sherlock had cared for the tiny bald thing while he and Mary went out. Catherine howled for the best part of an hour. Mrs. Hudson was away; Molly and Lestrade weren't answering his texts. He was desperate and halfway to phoning Mummy when the tomato-faced creature let out a frothy belch and immediately fell asleep. Midnight found them both snoring in the armchair with Graham Norton blaring in the background. How John (and Mary) loved to tell that story, inventing new and embarrassing levels of detail every few years.

"I know you don't like big emotional to-dos," snuffled Catherine.

Sherlock found himself smiling. "Thought you weren't too keen on them either."

"Motherhood makes you soppy."

_So does not-quite-fatherhood._

"Nigel and the boys are out in the car."

"Go get them."

"I don't want to leave you."

"I'll hardly fade away in five minutes."

Car doors slammed, children giggled. They swarmed up the stairs, the baby's bare feet and hands padding doglike on the wooden floor in the hall.

Grandsons, Will and John. Son-in-law chasing after them, wary as always of the sharp and poisonous, the stinging and hot.

"Show me," said Will, tugging at the belt from Sherlock's dressing gown. "Show me what's on your scope."

Sherlock grinned. "It's rather nasty. Are you sure?"

"Hurrah!"

"He didn't get that from anywhere in particular," said Catherine.

Nigel huffed. "Nowhere at all."


	2. Nobody said it was easy

**Four Hours Earlier**

Catherine's voice rose over the soupy clamor of little boys in the bath. "Have you seen Sherlock at all since we left? You haven't?" Something slammed into the doorframe - maybe Cathy's fist. "God damn him straight to Hell!.... I'm sorry, Mrs. Carr. Will you please call me if you hear anything? Thanks."

In the bath, four-year-old William poured a full cup of water over his brother's head. Nigel made a move to snatch the cup away, but John only laughed as bubbles slid over his forehead. "Again!"

Catherine slipped into the bathroom and knelt beside her husband on the soggy cotton mat. She reached into the cooling water and splashed John's chubby legs.

"Any news, love?"

Catherine's smile drew itself on a blank expression like a child scribbling with a dull crayon. "We've got to drive down there this morning."

"Today? Cathy --"

"I just lost one father. I can't lose another so soon." Catherine rose quickly from the bath mat and strode away, closing the bedroom door behind her.

He couldn't run after her, not with the boys still in the bath. Nigel squeezed baby shampoo into his palm and rubbed it into Will's hair with trembling fingers.

Nigel had loved John Watson. Earthy and steadfast, fierce and kind, he was everything a father should be. (Worlds different from his "sperm donor," as Mum persisted in calling his own father.) Nigel tried to love Sherlock Holmes; God only knew how he tried.

* * *

Sitting in the lounge at 221B with John, Nigel heard Cathy and Sherlock shouting in the upstairs laboratory.  It was the first night Cathy had brought him home for dinner -- John had been gracious, but Sherlock was an utter bastard.

"He's utterly useless! He follows you around like a balloon on a string."

"You take that back, Sherlock."

Downstairs, John rolled his eyes at the fracas and sipped his tea. Nigel's hands were shaking so much he could barely lift his own cup.

"Nigel gets sick when you and your Dad talk about intubation. Doesn't he know what you do all day in med school? Where your hands are, deep in some dead fool's intestines? You don't need a hopeless pearl-clutching bore in your life."

John pushed himself up from his armchair and stalked toward the stairs. "Sherlock! Enough!"

"What, darling, could you hear us down there? Heavens, no... Ouch!"

Cathy ran downstairs. She landed heavily in Sherlock's chair and stared at the unlit fireplace with reddened eyes.

Nigel got up and took his coat from the rack. He couldn't look at his girlfriend who sat looking so much like her Dad, small and sturdy with honey-blonde hair brushing her shoulders.

"I don't want to put you through this anymore, Cathy. I'm sorry." He closed the door behind him.

Cathy pelted down the stairs behind him and out into Baker Street. "Don't act so scared of him! Sherlock eats that up. Nigel, wait! Please!"

"I didn't think you wanted me to wait."

Cathy stood in a garish orange pool of light. "Screw your passive-aggressive shit! If Sherlock doesn't like you he can shove it up his arse. I am going to marry you. He is fucking stuck with you."

Their kiss stopped traffic.

Nigel felt like he'd been hit about the head with a cricket bat. "Was that a proposal?"

"Yes."

"Do you want a ring?"

"Let's go pick one out," she giggled and threw her arms around him.

* * *

Cathy Watson opened the bathroom door and slumped beside her husband on the damp cotton mat. "I called in at the hospital. I hope they can get someone to cover my A&E shift."

"Mummy!" crowed John. Cathy reached for a towel and plucked the toddler from the bath. She held him close and buried her face in his wet hair.

Nigel patted William dry. "I know you're very worried about your dad... I mean Sherlock. Is there a chance he wants to be left alone right now?"

Catherine looked up. Her tears mixed with the wetness of John's hair. "Screw what he wants. I need him."

"Then we'll go, love. We'll go together."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I updated! Reminder that this story is a collection of ficlets progressing backward in time. I'll try to start each chapter with how much further back we are traveling.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, commenting and leaving kudos. We will all get through this hiatus together!

**Author's Note:**

> The title and chapter titles are a nod to Coldplay's "The Scientist." Going forward, this is a drabble collection written in reverse chronological order. This is meant to be a little bit open-ended... The Watson-Holmes family as I left them here have begun writing their own back stories in my head. Whether it stays canon-compliant remains to be seen, but we should be good for another year before S4, right?
> 
> (2015 edit: or a couple years?! Argh ;) )
> 
> Thanks for reading. Constructive criticism is always welcomed on my stories. (Un-beta-read and un-Britpicked thus far -- unvarnished feels, straight up!)


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